I'd prefer to use stats that are explainable. Passer rating may be arbitrary and flawed, but at least we know how it's calculated. ANYA is a great stat- it's simple to calculate and bases it's formula off of studies that determined the actual value of an interception. I see any stat that we can't calculate ourselves as being a "mystery stat."

Football outsiders and Advanced NFL stats have a lot of mystery stats, but at least they pass the eyeball test. Seattle's high scores on DVOA and individual scores for DYAR make sense, there are no results that feel wildly at odds with reality. Same thing with Advanced NFL stats individual metrics like success rate.

But QBR almost never seems to pass the eyeball test. If you watched this game, you knew that Wilson played very well. He bought time, he made perfect throws when he had to, and he was smart with the football- most of his incompletions were throw-aways. His 133 passer rating was one of the highest of the week, but his QBR was under 50, saying that he had a below average game overall. QBR might take fumbles into consideration, but if it doesn't and still thinks that, then holy crap what a worthless stat.

Just as bad is Luck's 93.7 QBR, meaning a 93.7th percentile performance, on Thursday. His line? 18/26, 227 yards, 0 TD, 1 INT, 80.1 rating. It's a high YPA performance and probably under-rated by his QB rating, but there is just no way that he had a 94th percentile performance. If Indy was 75% on 3rd downs or something that might explain things, but they were 3/11, which is below average. Really, I can't figure it out, and it makes me think their system is too flawed to take seriously.

In fairness, FO pretty much agrees with QBR with Luck v. Wilson. Luck has a big lead in DYAR and a slim lead in DVOA. The lead in DYAR makes sense- since DYAR is a counting stat- more reps = more opportunity for DYAR. The DVOA number does surprise me though. Wilson only rates +1.2%, meaning that they see him as almost dead average. That's pretty close to QBR which has him at 56.9/100 for the season, with 50 being average.

It should be noted though that play tracking is very much a subjective science. With QBR they have to make decisions about who gets the blame for a drop and also awards extra points for an undefined "clutch factor." It's not hard at all to see bias coming into play with those numbers.

kearly wrote:I'd prefer to use stats that are explainable. Passer rating may be arbitrary and flawed, but at least we know how it's calculated. ANYA is a great stat- it's simple to calculate and bases it's formula off of studies that determined the actual value of an interception. I see any stat that we can't calculate ourselves as being a "mystery stat."

Football outsiders and Advanced NFL stats have a lot of mystery stats, but at least they pass the eyeball test. Seattle's high scores on DVOA and individual scores for DYAR make sense, there are no results that feel wildly at odds with reality. Same thing with Advanced NFL stats individual metrics like success rate.

But QBR almost never seems to pass the eyeball test. If you watched this game, you knew that Wilson played very well. He bought time, he made perfect throws when he had to, and he was smart with the football- most of his incompletions were throw-aways. His 133 passer rating was one of the highest of the week, but his QBR was under 50, saying that he had a below average game overall. QBR might take fumbles into consideration, but if it doesn't and still thinks that, then holy crap what a worthless stat.

Just as bad is Luck's 93.7 QBR, meaning a 93.7th percentile performance, on Thursday. His line? 18/26, 227 yards, 0 TD, 1 INT, 80.1 rating. It's a high YPA performance and probably under-rated by his QB rating, but there is just no way that he had a 94th percentile performance. If Indy was 75% on 3rd downs or something that might explain things, but they were 3/11, which is below average. Really, I can't figure it out, and it makes me think their system is too flawed to take seriously.

In fairness, FO pretty much agrees with QBR with Luck v. Wilson. Luck has a big lead in DYAR and a slim lead in DVOA. The lead in DYAR makes sense- since DYAR is a counting stat- more reps = more opportunity for DYAR. The DVOA number does surprise me though. Wilson only rates +1.2%, meaning that they see him as almost dead average. That's pretty close to QBR which has him at 56.9/100 for the season, with 50 being average.

It should be noted though that play tracking is very much a subjective science. With QBR they have to make decisions about who gets the blame for a drop and also awards extra points for an undefined "clutch factor." It's not hard at all to see bias coming into play with those numbers.

excellent post, and pretty much sums up my feelings about QBR. Too much vagueness and subjectivity for me to really take it seriously.

best part of those stats: Tate's 100.0 QBR and 158.3 passer rating. I vote we start him next week.

but yeah... passer rating is complicated enough... we don't need QBR in there making things even more confusing... and i also hate the how vague it is... no one knows exactly what it actually means, i don't know if even the people at espn know what it means.

It was Sherman who caused the fumble that was recovered by Jones IIRC. Sherman should be nominated for Defensive player of the week- if there is such an award. An INT and Sack for a CB is pretty awesome.

It was Sherman who caused the fumble that was recovered by Jones IIRC. Sherman should be nominated for Defensive player of the week- if there is such an award. An INT and Sack for a CB is pretty awesome.

Technically a strip sack, but really that was probably the worst play by Sanchez all day. He knew he was going down, yet he still tried to throw the ball and it ended up as a fumble. WTF? Sherman didn't even go for the strip sack, yet he still got on because of Sanchez's ineptitude.

Well, Wilson's overall rating of barely above average makes sense. As fans, we usually live in the moment, and Wilson has been progressively getting better, thus we have rose colored glasses on.

His stats, no matter what system you want to use, are poor on the road. He's well below average there. At home, he's very good, well above average. The mean is right around "above average".

Also take into account that he played poorly more often than not at the beginning of the season, while playing better more often than not recently. Those probably average out to...an average as well.

Taking into account that we had a lot of road games to start the year, rookie learning curve, and Wilson's (and the historically, the team's) performances on the road, and it's not surprising he grades out worse than a lot of people on this board feel he performs. We have more home games than road games left, plus one road game we have is against an opponent that gives us some yards though the air (Buffalo). Wilson will end up having a rating that most of us here can tolerate and agree with at the end of the year.

Sarlacc83 wrote:Wilson's QBR rating is a load of junk and we all know it.

Well he did spot the other team 7 points.

And I think I just realized why Wilson's QBR is bad. It's because QBR downgrades performances that occur when the other team is up big, ie the seahawks for the 4th quarter and such. BUT, when the game was close, Wilson performed very poorly, and because the game was close it factored more into Wilson's performance. That's probably why Wilson had such a bad score.

If I want to read depressing, pseudo-metrics which indicate my team sucks, I'll just go over to USSMariner.com. Their (and others) overly-anal analysis of statistics in baseball has sort of rendered Mariner baseball boring, namely because the non-playing know-it-all's already know it all.

I pray the asexual, dweebish types that eschew their families for data compilation and analysis don't do to football what they did to baseball. Let's just play the damn game and enjoy the twists & turns. It's entertainment for Christ's sake, not a refresher of non-parametric statistics. The rest of my life already follows a script, I really don't need the season's outcome of my Seahawk football to be determined in August by guys who are hellbent on using things like QBR & QPR to ruin the excitement.

DohBoy wrote:If I want to read depressing, pseudo-metrics which indicate my team sucks, I'll just go over to USSMariner.com. Their (and others) overly-anal analysis of statistics in baseball has sort of rendered Mariner baseball boring, namely because the non-playing know-it-all's already know it all.

I pray the asexual, dweebish types that eschew their families for data compilation and analysis don't do to football what they did to baseball. Let's just play the damn game and enjoy the twists & turns. It's entertainment for Christ's sake, not a refresher of non-parametric statistics. The rest of my life already follows a script, I really don't need the season's outcome of my Seahawk football to be determined in August by guys who are hellbent on using things like QBR & QPR to ruin the excitement.

Bruce Irvin does not look like a bust BTW. 2 sacks along with 2 QB hits. A blank on the stat sheet for Clemons though

Clemons had a mostly quiet game but I do remember him coming from the left edge to blindside Sanchez. Really knocked the shit out of him on that hit. I feel that hit went a long way towards stymied offensive progress on behalf of the Jets.

Last edited by SmokinHawk on Mon Nov 12, 2012 11:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

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DohBoy wrote:If I want to read depressing, pseudo-metrics which indicate my team sucks, I'll just go over to USSMariner.com. Their (and others) overly-anal analysis of statistics in baseball has sort of rendered Mariner baseball boring, namely because the non-playing know-it-all's already know it all.

I pray the asexual, dweebish types that eschew their families for data compilation and analysis don't do to football what they did to baseball. Let's just play the damn game and enjoy the twists & turns. It's entertainment for Christ's sake, not a refresher of non-parametric statistics. The rest of my life already follows a script, I really don't need the season's outcome of my Seahawk football to be determined in August by guys who are hellbent on using things like QBR & QPR to ruin the excitement.

DohBoy

Great post man. With you 100%. Football is more than stats, it's heart, desire and will to overcome no matter the team being played or the conditions. Baseball and basketball have far less of that than football does.